I saw an optometrist this week for an eye condition. I am so fortunate to have access to great health care, in fact, to the best health care in the history of the human species to this point. (The future will, hopefully, give us even better medicine.) I always thank my doctors for having been at the top of their class, and for being accepted into and graduating from medical school.

Whenever I go to our medical campus I see something different than many others—I see a monument to science, reason, evidence and The Enlightenment. I am well aware of what how modern science has its origins in the Greek miracle, when the Greeks first used reason to try to understand the world. This contrasts with the supernatural or mythological thinking that had previously dominated human thinking about the world. A lightning bolt strikes; the God’s must be angry. I am sick; I must have upset the gods. A woman passed by and my sheep died; she must be a witch. How lucky we are to live in a secular world with naturalistic explanations for natural phenomena.

Just a reminder then the next time you visit your physician and get an antibiotic, an antiviral, a steroid shot, a vaccination or some other medicine or treatment based on science and reason and evidence. Be thankful you no longer live in a world dominated by supernatural explanations. It wasn’t that long ago that infections were life threating or that half of all children born never saw adulthood.

What a monument to human reason is modern medicine. I’m so thankful for it.

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